


The Beast Lurking

by englishstrawbie



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:41:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27079012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishstrawbie/pseuds/englishstrawbie
Summary: The knowledge of the beast lurking nearby has always been there and it's almost time for her to claim Dani.Jamie thinks back to Owen’s mom. She thinks about how Owen had given up his life in France to take care of her as she had become a shadow of herself, the dementia slowly taking a little piece of her day by day. ‘It must be a relief,’ Jamie had said. How wrong she had been.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 14
Kudos: 87





	The Beast Lurking

It’s only November and the snow has already started to fall, just a light dusting on the cars and window ledges so far. Jamie closes the shop early in the winter months, the visitors to the town dropping as the temperature falls and business growing quieter. She doesn’t mind, she has become fond of spending the dark nights at home, curled up against Dani’s warm body as she reads or they watch tv.

She walks the short distance home as the sun sets, a soft orange hue illuminating the sky. She has the same, familiar feeling of contentment as she does at the end of every day, happy to know that the woman she loves will be waiting for her.

She pushes her hands deeper into her pockets to protect them from the cold, her thumb running instinctively over the ring on her wedding finger. A smile passes across her lips and her pace quickens. Their apartment is only three blocks away. The route home takes her past row upon row of townhouses that she dreams of them owning one day. Somewhere with a yard she can grow plants and flowers, and maybe a vegetable patch.

Their apartment is on the fourth floor, giving them a view across the rooftops of the town. Jamie brushes the snow off her coat and runs her hand through her curly hair before she goes inside and trudges up the staircase, mindful of not leaving a mess in her wake. Dani always scolds her when she notices the dirty footprints she leaves behind on the stairs.

As she enters the apartment, she sees Dani by the window, her forehead pressed against the glass looking out over the street below. Visiting Vermont had been Jamie’s idea, but staying and making it their home had been Dani’s choice, borne from her love of the changing seasons. This will be their tenth Christmas together; ten years of exchanging gifts in bed and eating tree-shaped pancakes for breakfast, ten years of throwing snowballs in the nearby park and warming up afterwards with hot chocolate topped with marshmallows.

Jamie can’t wait. She has already designed this year’s Christmas wreath in her head and has started collecting the foliage to make it in time to hang on the front door immediately after Thanksgiving.

Dani doesn’t move as Jamie steps inside and pushes the door closed. Whatever is on Dani’s mind has all of her attention. Jamie shrugs off her coat and hangs it on a hook, sliding her feet out of her boots and walking into the apartment.

“Hey,” she says softly.

Dani doesn’t hear her. Her body is rigid, her eyes fixated on the window, and Jamie feels uneasy all of a sudden. She takes another step forward.

“Dani?” she says a little louder.

It is only then that Dani reacts, turning her head towards the sound. Her eyes are wide and vacant, and Jamie realises that she wasn’t looking out at the snow at all.

She was staring at her reflection.

Jamie’s eyes flicker towards the window and she sees the profile of Dani’s face, just like normal.

Except when she looks at Dani, everything about the way Dani looks back at her tells Jamie that it isn’t normal, that something is very wrong.

A heaviness falls across Jamie’s chest. She knows what it means; deep down in the pit of her stomach, she knows. After all, they’ve been expecting it.

The beast in the jungle.

They’ve been expecting it ever since that day in the bedroom ten years ago, when Jamie pinky-promised to stay by Dani’s side and keep her company. There had been something about the way Dani had looked that day, so scared and lost, that had captured Jamie’s heart, and it was then that Jamie knew that whatever time Dani had before the beast came to claim her, she wanted to be time they had together.

Because it turned out that Jamie had been waiting for Dani her whole life. All the pain of losing her family, the abuse in foster care, living on the streets in London as a teenager and ending up in prison, and starting over at Bly Manor thanks to the generosity of the Wingraves had led her to that day when she walked into the kitchen to see Dani sat at the table. It had taken her a while but eventually Jamie had opened up and let Dani into her life, and there hadn’t been a day since that she had regretted it.

She didn’t regret for a second promising her life to someone who carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.

The days and months and years had passed, and the memory of Bly was always with them. Staring Jamie in the face – literally – as Dani’s eyes revealed the secret that they carried around with them. Her big blue eyes now one blue, one brown; changed forever since that night at the lake when Dani had saved Flora’s life. 

The knowledge of the beast lurking nearby has always been there, but they have done more than just wait for her to return. They have travelled America using the money that Henry Wingrave gifted them. They have seen things that Jamie never believed growing up that she would get to see, like the Liberty Bell and the Empire State Building. They have fallen in love. They have built a home and a business and a life together, and Jamie isn’t ready to let that go. Not now, not ever.

But Jamie knows she doesn’t have a choice. When the day comes, she won’t be able to stop it. She’ll try as hard as she can, she’ll give up everything for just one more day with Dani, but eventually she will lose and the beast will win.

She already feels Dani pulling away from her. She is as loving and giving as always, but a wall is starting to build between them. It might be invisible, but it’s there, and Jamie hates it. She wants to take a sledgehammer and knock it down, like she would the walls of a garden, but she can’t. She can’t stop the inevitable.

She carries that with her every day, in her heart, knowing that when that day comes, all she will be able to do is watch as the person she loves most in the world is taken away from her. She pushes it down as much as she can, but sometimes it catches her by surprise and the pain is overwhelming.

She says the words herself, a desperate whisper into the darkness when Dani is sleeping.

_It’s you, it’s me, it’s us._

It doesn’t work, and Jamie doesn’t know if that’s because the beast won’t let go of Dani or because Dani won’t let go of the beast. She knows that Dani won’t let anyone else take on that burden, and it’s one of the reasons that Jamie loves her so much but, oh, it makes her so angry sometimes. Angry that Dani was so stupid for inviting the beast into herself, was so selfless in sacrificing herself. Not that she shares that anger with Dani; she keeps it hidden, her own burden to carry.

She thinks back to Owen’s mom. She thinks about how Owen had given up his life in France to take care of her as she had become a shadow of herself, the dementia slowly taking a little piece of her day by day. She remembers watching him break down upon hearing of her death, of hugging him a little bit tighter when she had greeted him at the funeral.

 _‘It must be a relief,’_ she had said to the others when she had got back to Bly.

How wrong she had been. How stupid and naïve and wrong.

There will be no relief when the inevitable happens, only pain and sorrow and loneliness, and Jamie isn’t ready for that. She isn’t ready for that goodbye. Not now, not ever.

“They say there’s going to be a foot of snow by next week,” Jamie says eventually.

She watches as the light comes back into Dani’s eyes, watches her face soften as she comes out of her reverie and recognises the woman in front of her. Her lips turn upwards into a smile although it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

James walks across the room and holds out her hand. Dani accepts it and Jamie pulls her away from the window, away from her reflection. She presses her lips to Dani’s cheek. Dani closes her eyes and leans into the kiss, and Jamie can feel her stealing as much comfort as she can from the embrace.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Jamie whispers.

She doesn’t say it outright, but Dani looks at her and there is a silent understanding that Jamie knows what’s going on.

Jamie feels a gentle squeeze of her hand, as Dani nods. “I’m fine, I just got caught up in the snow falling, that’s all.”

Jamie hates being lied to, but right now she prefers a lie to the truth.

Because she’s not ready for the truth.

Not now, not ever.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was born out of Jamie's comment in episode 4 that "on some level, it must be a relief" and then episode 9, the bath tub scene, when she so desperately says "not yet". The grief you feel at losing someone from a long, drawn out disease starts long before they die, and I wanted to tell a small piece of that story from Jamie's POV.


End file.
